This State Has the Highest Use of Mood-Altering Drugs

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Everyone needs to unwind, but we don't all do it in the same way.
Among the 50 states, it is people in West Virginia who most
commonly report taking mood-altering drugs to help them relax,
whereas Alaskans are the least likely to say the same, a new poll
finds.

Nationwide, about 19 percent of Americans reported
taking drugs to relax daily or almost every day, according to
the 2014 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. About 62 percent of
Americans said they never use drugs for this reason, and the
remaining 19 percent said they use them rarely or sometimes.

"It's no coincidence that drug use was inversely proportionate to
the [state] well-being score," said Dan Witters, who led the
Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index research. The results of an
earlier poll, announced in February, showed that people in West
Virginia reported the lowest levels
of well-being in the country, while Alaskans reported the
highest.

Factors in peoples' lives that cause feelings of low well-being
also "are things that increase the chances of drug use," Witters
said. For example, low well-being is linked to higher rates of
depression,
obesity, poor self-esteem and stress. It's unclear whether a
poor sense of well-being is a trigger that leads people to take
drugs to relax, or whether, vice versa, taking the drugs can
cause people to generally feel worse, he added.

For the drug-use poll, researchers interviewed at least 450
residents ages 18 or older in each state and the District of
Columbia (about 177,000 people total) between January and
December 2014. They asked the question, "How often do you use
drugs or medications, including prescription drugs, which affect
your mood or help you relax?" The drugs could include
prescription or
recreational drugs, alcohol or nicotine, but most people
probably didn't include drinking or smoking, Witters told Live
Science.

After West Virginia, Rhode Island reported the second-highest
rate of drug use for relaxation. Six of the top 10 drug-use
states were in the South. More than 1 in 5 residents of Kentucky,
Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi and Missouri said
they use drugs to relax nearly every day.

The states with the lowest rates of reported drug use after
Alaska were Wyoming and California. Other states with low rates
of use were Illinois, North Dakota, New Jersey, Colorado, Texas
and Utah, where about 1 in 6 residents said they used drugs to
relax almost daily.

These states also had the highest well-being scores in the poll,
Witters said.